Powering Off Goes Wrong

if the power button is orange and blinks, your motherboard or cpu is toasted. Call Dell service either way or check their website for troubleshooting tips.

I saw tons of this at work.

Kevin said - “The power button on the case is not green but glows orange”. On a Dell, an amber power LED is an indication of a bad power supply.

Kevin’s problem sounds like a power supply issue. I work on Dell PCs and this exact problem happens probably once a month.
Unplug the power cord from the PC and hold the power button in on the front of the case for 10-20 seconds. Plug the power cord back in and push the power button to turn it on. You may have to repeat this sequence a couple times. If the PC powers up like normal after these steps, you need a new power supply.
Hope this helps.

It still may be the motherboard or power supply. The words “Dell Display Perfection” may be the monitors powering up - I know my Dell monitors display a message from Dell on power-up, and who knows what the newer or other models may have displayed on power-up? The fact that the power button on the case goes orange, and not to normal green state, points to a hardware failure. If the hard drives and fans stay at “jet engine” speeds - you have a hardware failure, probably motherboard, could be one part of the power supply.

The power light switching from green to amber indicates a motherboard or power supply fault. It is most likely the mother board but he should test the power supply before calling dell. hope this helps.

You may try this: While your computer is running, press and hold the power on button for at least 4 seconds. My HP documentation says to do this if normal shutdown does not respond. I don’t know if Dell computers respond to this feature or you may need to press and hold for a few seconds longer.

when i encounter a weird start up problem things like power button not working or the machine half starting after a ‘power up issue’ like a power failure or surge i try this it works surprisingly well
disconnect the power cord (if it is a laptop pull the battery also) then hold the power button down for a minute this drains the residual charges on any capacitors on the mother board and power supply (some of the filter caps in the power supply and mother board can hold a charge for a week before it gets low enough to re start the computer on its own)

I think what I find most troubling is the total trust in Dell documentation regarding the whole Amber light thing.

Yes, technically this is spot on - I would agree that this is often the case. The symptoms would seem to match up for CPU or motherboard error. PSU on the other hand, I am not so sure about without actual inspection.

But if I have also ended up with boxes where hardware fault was assumed without actually following up on the os side first. Yes, this included Dell boxes. This way it is 100% vs 99%. Maybe I am old fashion, but to me this just seems like too much trust is being put into something leaving me wondering.

Would you be the kind of tech to not even bother testing to see if that silly amber light alert might be off? I mean, hello - S.M.A.R.T. disk technology? There was a big joke as everything set that off and it was sort of the same idea. Verify, verify, verify. ;)

I had a similar ptoblem on my Optiplex GX620. The problem turned out to be the USB dock for my phone. Apparently the phone dock was supplying power to the USB cable and feeding back into the motherboard through the USB port. Unplugging the USB cable corrected the problem.